The present disclosure relates generally to messaging services and, in particular, to methods, systems, and computer program products for implementing community messaging services.
For new real-time applications that reach a large community in a broadcast fashion (e.g., community messaging tools), there is a need to distribute messages to potentially everyone in the community in order to obtain a response as quickly as possible. However, the community in general typically does not want to be disturbed by inappropriate or excessive messages. Current solutions include having the right to publish a message on selected channels. This involves being in an Access Control List (ACL). Only authorized people in the ACL are permitted to send messages. One drawback to this solution is that the sender must be authorized in order to be able to broadcast to his/her community. Thus, if only a few people are authorized, most of the community would not benefit from the application broadcasting features. If too many people are authorized to broadcast, then it is difficult to prevent people from sending inappropriate broadcasts or from receiving excessive broadcasts.
Another solution is to provide a means for filtering messages upon receipt, in which a filtering system on the receiving end will determine whether or not to display the message to the user based on user-set criteria. However, if everyone in the community filters messages, then the community purpose may be defeated as very few messages may be permitted to pass through the filter. Moreover, the creation of a filter is not an automatic and friendly process. If a user wants to restrict the quantity and content of messages he receives, he will have to do all the work to setup filters such as listing keywords that need to be in messages received by him. Further, even if filters are used, and the messages are determined to be filter compliant, the potential problem remains that everyone in the community will receive all messages.
Another solution is to obtain feedback on a broadcast (i.e., is the broadcast appropriate or inappropriate) after the transmission. If the broadcast message is inappropriate, negative points are placed on the sender's profile, which would prevent him/her from sending future broadcasts. One drawback, however, is that everyone in the community will still receive the inappropriate message.
What is needed, therefore, is a broadcast messaging solution that provides fast and effective responses, while balancing the needs and desires of the entire community (i.e., preventing excessive and/or inappropriate messages).